the monster within

That thought ran through our heads as we hung up the phone with the nurse. She’d called to let us know the results of a diagnostic ultrasound done on Rachel. The results? A tumor called a teratoma (from the Greek word for “monster”) is apparently residing in Rachel’s abdomen. “It’s not cancerous,” the nurse assured us, “it’s just big and needs to come out.” It really caught us by surprise to find out about the tumor, and made us stop and wonder, “okay, God, what are You wanting to teach us through this?” Dealing with this situation on top of the stress of our major final linguistics project has driven us to lean on God even more than before, and we have found Him to be more than sufficient for every need.

After an appointment to run more tests (and having to get stuck with a needle 5 times for 6 tubes of blood) and plenty of phone calls with doctors, emails about insurance, and days of waiting, we traveled to Columbia, Missouri today to meet with the doctor who will do Rachel’s surgery. Initially, the doctor said the soonest he could operate to remove the teratoma (which Rachel affectionately dubbed “Terry the Monster”) would be the end of June. But while the doctor stepped out of the room, we prayed that God could somehow make it so Rachel could get surgery next week; and when the doctor came back, he said he could rearrange the schedule so that he can operate on Rachel either next Thursday (5/29) or Friday (5/30)!

The doctor is also going to try to remove the tumor laparoscopically (with 5 small incisions) using a surgical robot instead of doing a larger abdominal incision (which would require a longer recovery time, be more painful, etc). Since the tumor is 12cm in diameter, there is still a chance that he’d have to make a large incision in order to remove the tumor, so please pray that he’d be able to remove the whole thing using only laparoscopic surgery. Thank you so much for lifting us up before the throne of grace!